Wednesday, 10 September 2014

Of Monsters and Madness by Jessica Verday

Sponsored post: I received a digital copy of this book for free on a read-to-review basis. Thanks to EgmontUSA and Edelweiss.

Blurb (from Goodreads):

A romantic, historical
retelling of classic Gothic horror featuring Edgar Allan Poe and his
character Annabel Lee, from a New York Times best-selling author.

Summoned
to her father's home in 1820's Philadelphia, a girl finds herself in
the midst of a rash of gruesome murders in which he might be implicated.
She is torn romantically between her father's assistants-one kind and
proper, one mysterious and brooding-who share a dark secret and may have
more to do with the violent events than they're letting on.

Source: I received a digital copy of this book for free on a read-to-review basis. Thanks to EgmontUSA and Edelweiss.)Teenager Annabel goes to Philadelphia to stay with her father, after her mother’s death. When she arrives everything isn’t quite what she expected.What is wrong with her father? And what does he do in his lab?This was an okay story, but I lost interest.Annabel was an okay character, and I admired how she relied on her own instincts and learning in stressful situations. I felt sorry for her because of the way her father treated her, but at least her grandfather stuck up for her some.The storyline in this was slow, and I got bored. There just wasn’t enough happening to keep me interested, and the scary bits weren’t scary at all. I also didn’t appreciate that the author had named one of the characters Edgar Allan Poe.There was some romance but I didn’t like that either. I didn’t like the love interest at all, and I really didn’t get why Annabel did! I suppose she didn’t exactly have many options though.The ending was pretty poor in my opinion, and the book just seemed to stop. Not that I was upset that I was finished, quite the opposite in fact, but I just felt like we didn’t get closure.Overall; slow, dull, and with a poor ending,4 out of 10.